Bitcoin Price Graph

Law enforcement agencies in the UK and Netherlands arrested a group of six cybercriminals who are suspected of stealing bitcoins worth €24 million. There is one woman among them.

Five men and one woman were arrested on suspicion of fraud involving bitcoins worth €24 million. The suspects were detained in their homes in the UK and Netherlands as a result of a 14-month joint operation by Europol, Eurojust, the National Crime Agency of the United Kingdom (NCA) and the South-West Regional Division for Cybercrime (SW RCCU), as well as the Dutch police.

According to Europol, the hackers allegedly used domain names similar to legal cryptocurrency services, but with minor deviations, and created mirror websites on these domains that resemble real crypto services. The addresses of fake services were distributed through social networks, and users, accessing fake web pages, entered their keys, passing this information into the hands of fraudsters. Cybercriminals used passwords and keys in order to access users' accounts and steal bitcoins, transferring them to crypto addresses they control.

According to law enforcement officials, at least 4,000 users in 12 countries fell victims of this group of hackers, but it is expected that the number of victims and the amount of stolen funds will increase as the investigation still goes on.

The case was transferred to the European Cybercrime Center (EC3) and the Joint Task Force on Cybercrime (J-CAT).

In January, Europol arrested a British man allegedly responsible for stealing more than €10 million in IOTA cryptocurrency. He is suspected of creating a random password generator used by IOTA traders who secretly stole their unique passwords and forwarded these passwords to the hacker.